‘Justified,’ Season 4, Episode 2, ‘Where’s Waldo?’: TV Recap

One of the great themes of “Justified” is expertise—virtuosity, even—and the ways in which it can be undone. Sometimes the comeuppance is quick, within a scene; sometimes it takes a season to unfold. And sometimes a character, once brought low, satisfyingly gets his mojo back. We see a little of all of that in this season’s second episode.

Raylan Givens, of course, is an expert at sussing out a gunman’s motivations and moves, and getting the upper hand. He’s less of an expert at managing his increasingly messy personal life, as his boss, Art, points out. While they’re on a stakeout to try to catch up to the nefarious family of Waldo Truth, the holder of the driver’s license from the diplomatic pouch in Arlo’s wall, Art calls Raylan on his recent odd behavior: “You’re keepin’ addict hours. You come in late, you leave early, you’re haggard.” He goes on to warn Raylan against any kind of off-hours moonlighting—of the kind that Raylan is definitely doing, and that almost went way wrong in episode one.

After the youngest Truth child picks up the family’s illicit disability check from the staked-out mailbox and Art, Raylan and their colleague Tim follow him home, there’s a confrontation with the amazingly lawless Truth clan. (As Tim outlined before the marshals set out for Versailles: “Extortion, evading arrest, assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, extortion count two, D&D, B&E…”—and that’s just the eldest, Judd Truth.) Judd and his siblings aren’t swayed by Raylan’s threat to shoot them if they flinch—“Never thought I’d live this long,” the middle brother says with a chuckle. Their mom comes out to defuse the situation, and the marshals end up inside waiting for Waldo to come home.

Which he does—or not. Turns out it’s a fellow named Harold, masquerading as Waldo lo these 15 years to keep those government checks coming. The real Waldo, his wife recalls, got tangled up 30 years ago with a pilot called Jew, who said Waldo would never return. Jew? Er, make that Drew Thompson, as Art somehow figures out. Instead of arresting all the Truths and un-Truths on the long list of counts that Raylan lays out, Art says they’ll simply take the family’s guns and be on their way.

Later, Art explains to Raylan and Tim over glasses of $200 Pappy Van Winkle bourbon (a gift from the chief deputy marshal in Bowling Green, who’s angling for the maybe-retiring Art’s position) that in his second year on the service, Drew Thompson had gone splat in a cul-de-sac. Or, again, not—a telltale wound on the body’s posterior means it was actually Waldo Truth whom the ground rushed up to meet. So, instead of “Where’s Waldo?,” the mystery shifts to the whereabouts of Drew. Art’s guessing that Arlo knows something about that. And if there’s any subject on which Raylan has a most unwilling but extensive expertise, it’s his murderous, incarcerated daddy.

Raylan’s old pal Boyd Crowder, unlike the bluntly cunning Arlo, is a big-thinking virtuoso in the ways of the criminal mastermind, but he has his blind spots, too. For one, it takes him a while to come around to the idea that Preacher Billy’s Last Chance Holiness Church is really behind Harlan County’s dried-up sales of oxy. He shoots down Johnny and Ava when they try to get him to check out the church, snapping, “I don’t like churches, Ava.” As brilliantly played by Walton Goggins, Boyd seems like a man with a soul-deep hurt he’s trying not to think about—his time as a man of faith left more of a mark than he wants to admit, even to himself.

Boyd seems vindicated for a while when his pal/enforcer Colton Rhodes catches what turns out to be a Dixie Mafia heroin dealer skulking around the Crowder compound. “You were right—church ain’t your only problem,” says Colt. (It’s a nice turn by Ron Eldard as Colt, especially when he aims his gun at Danny the dealer, with blank menace, and admonishes him not to interrupt.) But the church immediately shows itself to be plenty big as a problem, when Ava fetches Boyd so he can see that the whorehouse is full of singing children who are trying to pass out Last Chance Holiness million-dollar bills to the spooked patrons. Boy, are they right to be spooked: Cut that bit a little differently, add some music stings and you’ve got yourself a nice scene for a horror movie. Call it “Children of the Cornpone.”

After toying with the upright but conflicted Harlan County sheriff, Shelby Parlow, Boyd secures some information on Preacher Billy and his sister, Cassie. For example, she’s a werepanther. No, wait, that was in “True Blood.” The actual intel is that the pair have taken their salvation tent to five cities in three years, “each more desperate and beaten-down than the last,” though they’ve had no trouble with the law. Boyd figures their MO is to damage the local criminals’ business and get bought off to leave.

Boyd and his compadres show up at the revival tent just as Ellen May, the show’s hooker with a dumb ol’ heart of 14-karat gold, is getting baptized. Billy welcomes Boyd, who parries the preacher’s piety with some Scripture citations of his own. Billy seems to come out on top when he counters Boyd’s accusation of avarice by forswearing all donations from the congregation, but Boyd smiles, saying they got what they needed: He learned from Cassie’s stone-faced reaction that she’s the power behind Preacher Billy’s throne, and they need only figure out what she wants.

Boyd’s discussing this as he and his crew await the arrival of Wynn Duffy, who spent last season caught between the fraying lunacy of Robert Quarles and the righteous implacability of Raylan. When Duffy walks in, he seems much more his old self: quietly commanding, supercilious in his dismissal of lesser men and thoroughly ruthless. With Danny tied up, Boyd proposes that instead of apologizing for the dealer’s incursion, Wynn should make Boyd the Harlan heroin-distribution partner of the Dixie Mafia. Wynn scoffs at the idea—Jere Burns is pitch-perfect in delivering the awesome “But I don’t even trust the way you just now said I could trust you.” Boyd, showing the limits of his criminal mastermind-hood, says Danny won’t leave the room alive unless Wynn reconsiders, whereupon Wynn shoots Danny in the head. So for the second week in a row, that’s Boyd being surprised by an unwanted execution. Wynn takes his leave, but not before asking about Arlo’s murder of a Dixie Mafia soldier in prison. Boyd, for the second time in as many minutes, is genuinely shocked.

The episode also brings us a certain burly, dark-haired stranger who’s quite adept with his fists. Raylan doesn’t find that out in their first encounter, when the guy comes to Lindsey’s bar while Raylan is helping with morning deliveries, but the stranger later wins a backyard prize fight and makes short work of a couple of dissatisfied bettors afterward. Something to bear in mind later: The stranger asks the fight promoter, “What about that other thing? How soon can your boys get what I want?” The promoter tells the guy to come up with the cash and he’ll make a call. Hmm.

We learn a little more about the stranger when he returns to the bar as Raylan and Lindsey are closing up. Raylan tells him to get lost, but the fellow says he’d just like to have a word with his wife. Raylan gives his apparently married girlfriend a quizzical look; we’ll look forward to seeing what’s on the other end of it.